Laura realized her thighs didn't shake anymore as she perched over the chamber-pot. Must be acclimating,she thought, as she washed herself before replacing the lid and shoving the container back under the bed. Grabbing another rag from under the wash basin, she started washing for the day. Her reflection kept surprising her. She hadn't gotten accustomed to the increased color the sun was bringing out in her cheeks, the startling brightness of the whites of her eyes against her slightly tanned skin.

A streak of morning sun fell through the window, turning the curls falling over her shoulder to a reddish cedar tone. The skin of her body now looked like marble against the new color in her hands and face.

She would miss the sun when they went back, she thought. She was starting to get addicted to the way the rays sank into her skin even through her clothes, down into her bones with luscious warmth.

"I should've taken more time to go to the beach," she told her reflection. She could have gone more often, could have stretched out on a salt-water-faded beach towel, letting the ocean and the sunlight lull her to sleep, maybe daring to take her top off and feel her nipples crinkle in the cross breeze as they warmed and bloomed into a richer red…. She wrinkled her nose as the image changed to an old memory of mild sunburn, of shoving her bra in a backpack and holding her top away from the sticky cooling cream. That experience had put an end to her beach-side daring.

Washing done, she stood there for a minute, gathering up her courage. Sighing, she soaped up her fingers and arranged her right arm up and back over her head. Better to start out with the right, she thought. It wasn't really delaying…it would just give her a baseline. She watched her eyebrow arch in the mirror. Apparently that line hadn't even fooled herself. She moved her fingers over and around her breast, over the fine red hairs growing in under her arm.

She was done too soon. Laura glanced at the clock…maybe she didn't have enough time for this. The children started getting antsy on Wednesdays, having been (mostly) still for two days and looking forward to a half-day of tending the school garden. Frak—not even 7:30.

She raised her left arm up and behind her head, willing her fingers to be objective, detached. To not slide away from where her lump had been. Dr. Cottle had wanted to do this the last time, the awkward start to his first round of tests since they returned from New Caprica. She had asked him to wait until after she and the Admiral had returned from their test Raptor run. Bill had rationalized and barked and finally issued formal orders before Lee and Chief gave in to the Old Man piloting the Raptor for a test jump. The machine oil had still been slick around the base of the repaired jump drive.

Lee and Tyrol had just shaken their heads at Bill's muttering that the President wanted to increase her knowledge of aircraft. Tigh had been the lone hold-out against the idea. Behind closed doors, he'd suggested snidely that Bill 'just wanted a frakkin' joy ride with his woman'. Laura had walked into Bill's quarters then, heard the remark and watched as Saul turned away, but not before she'd seen the haunted despair in his eye. She'd wondered, then, if that was something he and Ellen would have done.

Bill had just wanted some quiet solitude with her for an hour or so. She had been curious about being away from the fleet, just them and the stars and a cabin with some space for a change. Maybe more than curious…she remembered how frustrated she'd been when Cottle wouldn't budge about the testing being done first. Her face had reddened as Cottle carefully ignored how her nipples had hardened against her frayed bra, showing through the worn, thin fabric of her blouse while thoughts of Bill, an isolated Raptor, and any number of delicious possibilities had run through her mind.

He'd finally nodded at her promise to return for an examination after she got back, settling for drawing blood and running a scan. Ishay had barely fixed the tiny bandage in the crease of her elbow before Laura had walked out as quickly as she could in her office pumps.

She could still see those pumps, lined up neatly below her suit skirt and jacket hanging in her narrow closet on Colonial One. She had seen her carefully restored red wrap and skirt outfit there and stuffed it in her bag on a whim. Silly, but it had been worth it.

Tyrol had let her in the Raptor before Bill got there, turning his back as she switched out of her casual cotton pants and sweater into the soft red fabric. Bill's eyes had burned with a bright blue flame for a second when he climbed in and got a look at her. And she had purred "I'm ready for some adventure, Husker," too low for Tyrol to hear.

The clock's tick brought her back out of the Raptor's cabin with a thud as she felt the soap drying on her fingers, her arm still stretched over her head. Grumbling, she wet her fingers again in the china basin and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She didn't want to watch herself as she probed for a knot, a pea, a notice that her luck had run out. Didn't want to see her reflection's face fall….

Ten minutes later, Laura shoved the last hairpin into the sedately arranged coils at the back of her head, grinning at her reflection and checking the back of her hair with a hand mirror. She buttoned up her blouse over the corset that fit just right around her waist and snugged over her perfectly clear, perfectly smooth breasts. As she hooked up her boots, she thought about sharing her findings (or lack thereof) with Bill.

She finally waved that thought away. No need to even put the possibility in his mind, she thought. She'd just share her elated mood with him when he got back from whatever reconnoitering Swearengen had him doing up at Mr. Bullock's property. She was sure her mood would make it through the school day. She left the door cracked for Richardson, who'd be by their room mid-morning to empty the guests' chamber-pots, then whirled down the stairs, practically dancing off the bottom step. The morning felt fantastic.

Cottle never felt at ease around the CIC. The beeps and hums that held everyone's attention didn't give him the clear picture that the machines in sickbay did. He suspected he looked as uncomfortable as these crew members looked when they spent time on his turf.

"Need something, Doctor?"

Cottle turned so his back was to the milling crowd of CIC staff as he moved closer to Lee.

"I need to make you aware of something. It's about the President."

Lee's lips tightened. He looked drawn and scruffy, eyes red-veined from too many hours without sleep. "We're doing everything we can for her and my—the Admiral. We've got their position narrowed down to one planet but something above the ionosphere is interfering with getting a decent fix. We're trying to get something through, at least a signature, but"—

Cottle shook his head, mouth drawn. "Can you pull yourself away, Major? You're gonna want to hear this."

"What am I looking at?" Lee stared down at the chart, marked off with dates and numbers and black dots that dropped further and further, angling down the page, the last dot larger than the rest.

"I did a scan and blood workup on the President before she and your father took off on their little jaunt. She was in too much of a Godsdamned hurry for me to do more, but…her cancer has come back." He tapped at a black dot high and to the left of the page.

"Wherever she is, she (or he, the doctor thought) would have felt the growth by now. She'd have started having fatigue about here," he said, pointing at the next dot angling towards the bottom. "Around here," his pencil moved down further, "she'd start feeling some pain, radiating from the tumor mass back to her chest wall, up and around from her left breast to under her arm."

Lee traced the line between the dots with a suddenly shaky finger. Cottle's pencil was resting on a date that had already passed. The large black dot still loomed ahead down the thin line. It was at the very end of the line.

The end of the line.

"So, she's sick, I get it. Look, Doctor, I understand the urgency. I need to get back to CIC, keep working on—"

This is the part I hate, Cottle thought. Sympathy poured out of his faded blue eyes for the young earnest officer. They know what I mean, they know what I'm going to say, but it's not real until they hear it from me.

"Major Adama…Lee…this is a simulated projection, all right? The markers, her history from last time, her test results all indicate this is the most likely trajectory of her cancer." Lee kept his eyes on the paper, jaw clenched. His eyes were on the large black dot.

"And this," Cottle finally tapped the ugly black dot at the end, "this is when the cancer would have progressed to the point of"—Oh, frak this, he thought. "This is when the data says…she dies." His fingers in his right pocket fiddled with his cigarette case as he wished he was anywhere but here. "I'm sorry, Lee."

Finally taking his eyes off the malignant black dot, Lee looked at the dates.

"This was two days ago."

Cottle put his hand on Lee's shoulder. "I know."

"My father…"

"Your father will have been through hell, seeing her deal with this." Scenes of sandbags and secret smiles ran through his mind. He'd thought they both deserved some happiness at the time; now he wondered if that hadn't made it that much harder. "This makes finding them—him, even more urgent. If he's had to watch her die, if he's alone now…." He didn't have to finish. The alarm in Lee's eyes told him the risks were understood.

He sighed, finally pulling out his cigarette case. "Call me as soon as you make any kind of contact. I need to talk to your father myself, assess his state of mind while you work out the rescue. I need to get a feel for what I'll be dealing with."

Lee had started shaking his head. Cottle wondered if he was aware he was doing it. Denial runs strong in the Adama genes, he thought.

"Maybe your data's wrong. Maybe…you said you didn't do a full exam."

Lighting up, Cottle avoided meeting Lee's eyes. "Well, I've been wrong before. I'll need to know as much as I can about her condition, then, so I can start prepping for treatment as soon as they get back." He started straightening the papers, making meaningless notes in the margins as he heard Lee leave.

Whatever he needs to hang on to, so he can keep going, he can have, Cottle told himself. Smoke curled up from his ashtray as he stared at the chart for another minute, then flipped it closed. He hoped they weren't going to find two dead leaders. He opened the chart one last time and looked at the ID picture in front. You put up a hell of a fight, lady. I wish I could have been there for you at the end. He swiped at a beginning tear in his eye and closed the chart a last time.

Laura was putting up a hell of a fight.

Sweat had started beading her brow as she struggled. Finally, the deep roots of the weed pulled free of the black earth that had clung so tight. She wiped her forehead, leaving behind a black smudge. "Elijah!" she called, picking a shy ten year old out of the group of children gathered in the school garden. "Please rinse the dirt off the roots and bring the plant back inside."

Mrs. Bullock smiled with approval. Laura Adama was proving gifted in giving the children practical applications of their lessons, and she didn't shirk from getting her hands dirty. She watched the new teacher add drama to her botany lesson, illustrating photosynthesis with sweeping gestures towards the sun and trees. Mrs. Bullock wasn't sure how much the children understood, though. She'd seen their puzzled looks when Mrs. Adama seemed to grow more animated over the part of the lesson that described how plants made oxygen.

She hid a smile behind her hand when she heard Timothy whisper to his neighbor, "It's like she thinks we can run outa air!" Marshaling her features into composure, Mrs. Bullock tapped her desk to draw their attention. Everyone had their quirks, their ideas of what they considered important, she thought. Her burdens had been lifted considerably by Mrs. Adama's arrival, and if the cost of that was hearing some odd expressions occasionally, that was a price she was quite willing to pay.

She unconsciously rubbed at the thin gold band on her finger. Mr. Adama had lifted some other burdens,she reflected. He was a calming go-between in the business dealings between Mr. Bullock and Mr. Swearengen. Seth had cut back on his drinking and his late-night walks that she knew ended up near Mrs. Ellsworth's house before he headed back to his own. The ranching business was finally coming together, now that Mr. Swearengen was able to openly invest in the venture. There was something about the stocky blue-eyed stranger…he seemed so easy to trust. She looked at her fellow teacher, now diagramming plant systems on the chalkboard as she talked.

There was something about both the Adamas, she thought. She hoped they'd decide to settle in Deadwood. The town could use more people like them.

Cottle was splinting the ankle of a brash knuckle-dragger-in-training, grousing, "What did you think those last rungs were for, son?" when the call came.

"Ishay! Finish this up for me and tell Tyrol to work on basic ladder skills with his trainees. I've gotta go to CIC."

Dee met him halfway to CIC, keeping pace with him as she filled him in. "Sir, we've established a comm link with the Raptor. We're working on a navigational fix but there's still too much interference to nail it down."

His bushy eyebrows dipped as her meaning sunk in. "You're telling me we can talk to the Admiral but can't do frak-all to find him?"

"The talk is intermittent at best, Sir. There's also interference with the comm link, but we're getting through a few sentences at a time. They're okay, though, wherever they are."

That drew him up short. "Did you say "they?"

Dee stopped as well, her grey eyes showing a mixture of hope and fear. "Yes Sir. The Admiral says he and President Roslin are fine."

Cottle picked up his pace, shoving past crewmembers who didn't clear out of his path fast enough. "You go ahead and tell Major Adama I want a secure comm line to the Admiral as soon as I clear the hatch."